


The First Steps

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: We Are Defiance [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 15:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anakin Skywalker has never seen anyone else with the swirling motes of light that he knows surround him, and his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Steps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OwlFlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwlFlight/gifts).



The air shimmers around her like heat rising off the sands, swirling and glittering red and gold in the corner of his eye, the phantom impression of wings and crest and tail that are gone when he looks directly at her. It's like nothing he's seen around offworlders before. He certainly doesn't even see it around the man who Watto sends on his way without the parts they came for.

Today is his early day, because he's in the Arena the day before the race, and Watto's given him four days and a half day to rest and prepare. Not that Anakin needs it, but he takes the chance anyway. It gives him time to work on other things, like the racing pod he knows will secure his freedom. He's seen it.

They're in the market, the clumsy being who'd made a mess once again in trouble. Anakin smiles to himself, padding closer on silent feet behind Sebulba, and clearing his throat.

"You shouldn't be messing with off-worlder's pets, Sebulba. They might take it wrong, and then you're poodoo." He knows the man and Padmé - his red and gold queen - don't understand, and the clumsy one doesn't either. The droid does, and chortles in binary at him.

Sebulba drops the being, turning around and glaring up at Anakin. Visibly aching to say something, though in the end, he just snarls wordlessly and goes back to his table of friends. Not daring to challenge the champion of the Arena.

"You should be more careful," Anakin says in Basic as he reaches down to help the being up. "Sebulba has a temper."

"I can see that." The man responds before the other can even open his mouth. "You were in the junk shop. You work for Watto."

"Not exactly. He owns me." Anakin shrugs, ignoring the surprise from the man. "Come on, there are safer places than this to be, especially with a storm coming." He can hear it, the soft whistle that's beyond hearing, that makes the fire around him flare and spark. "Do you have shelter?"

"We can return to our ship. We'll be safe there." The man sounds very confident of that and Anakin snorts softly.

"If you're not in one of the hangers, you'll never make it. The storm will swallow you up and won't even bother to spit out the bones. Come on, I know somewhere you can stay." And he gets to stay in the presence of Padmé, a thought which makes him feel warm inside.

The man watches him a moment, then nods and gestures for Anakin to lead the way.

The path Anakin takes goes past the fruit seller's stall, and he pauses a moment to pick up some pallies to share with Padmé and the man. The Jedi - Anakin sees a brief flash of a hilt that he's seen in his dreams when the man lifts his poncho to tuck the pallies into his belt for later. The pod needs to be finished before this race, if there is a Jedi here.

He takes them around to the slave quarters, the dust beginning to blow in as they make it to the door of the space he once shared with his mother. Until the moisture farmer had bought her - bought her, freed her, and married her, which leaves Anakin with one less worry. At least she'd been safely free when Watto first entered Anakin into the Arena.

"It's not much, but it's better than being out with the storm." Anakin waves to the small table, ducking into the kitchen to grab food bars, glad he has extra for the upcoming fight. "I have an extra pallet, if you don't mind a bit of dirt and grease. I'd been using it to store Threepio while I rebuild him."

"We'll manage." The Jedi smiles, accepting the food  bar Anakin hands him. "Do you live by yourself?"

"Watto sleeps at the shop, and mom's lived out on a moisture farm since I was thirteen." Anakin offers the best of the chairs to Padmé, smiling when she takes it, the red and gold dragon curling its tail around her feet. He wants to reach out and touch it, but he hesitates, leaving it for the moment. Maybe if he has a moment to talk to her without the Jedi or their other companion  hovering.

"It will be enough. Thank you for offering us shelter, Anakin." Padmé remembers his name from earlier, and it makes Anakin smile.

"Mom always said the problem is not enough people help each other. I try to do what I can." Following the tug of the whisper that tells him of storms, that tells him when to strike to end a fight without killing, when to make a turn in a racing pod. When to push against things, and when it's best to bow his head and wait.

The Jedi watches him for a long moment, but doesn't say anything, taking the worst of the chairs before Anakin can do so, leaving him to the seat that has been his favored one since before his mother had been freed.

Dinner, meager as it is, passes in silence, and Anakin watches his guests. His dreams had always shown him the laser sword, had shown him a pod race, had whispered that freedom would follow, but he's not sure how a Jedi is going to free him. They'd never shown any interest in Tatooine or her enslaved before.

"You're a Jedi, aren't you?" Anakin glances at the Jedi a moment before looking away again, watching Padmé's dragon swirl and dance instead. "I saw your laser sword earlier."

"Perhaps I killed a Jedi and took it." The Jedi leans back, peeling one of the pallies Anakin had handed him earlier.

Anakin snorts, shaking his head, though the whisper is quiet at  the moment. The dreams are as vivid in his memory as they are when he has them. "You couldn't kill a Jedi. You'd never have come here if you had."

The Jedi frowns, giving him a measuring look. "What makes you say that?"

Shrugging, Anakin picks up a pallie, peeling away the cap. "I know things." He pops the pallie into his mouth, chewing it as he watches the Jedi. "I'm right, aren't I?"

He doesn't get an answer from the Jedi for a long moment, as the man studies him with an unreadable expression. "You are. I am Qui-Gon Jinn."

"I need your help." What help the Jedi can provide, Anakin's dreams were not clear, only the flashes, the certainty that this Jedi was part of his gaining his freedom.

"If you want me to buy you free, I'm afraid my credits aren't any good on Tatooine." Qui-Gon gives Anakin a brief, apologetic smile, and Anakin shakes his head.

"If it were that simple, I wouldn't need your help." Anakin pauses, tilting his head, trying to catch the faint whisper that threads through his mind. "And I think, if you help me with what I need, I can help you with what you need."

Qui-Gon raises an eyebrow at him, and Padmé leans forward in her seat.

"How?" She asks, before Qui-Gon can voice that same question.

"The Boonta Eve race is soon, and everyone gambles on the pod race that's held then." Anakin smiles at them, leaning forward a little himself. "I have a pod, but I need a pilot, and someone to sponsor it. If you have someone who can race, and you enter it, then you can wager enough to win the credits for what you need, and when it wins, maybe enough for me, too."

"I don't know that we have anyone who can race a pod, but we shall do what we can." Qui-Gon pauses, frowning contemplatively a moment. "We may be able to modify your pod so you can race it yourself."

There is a whisper of rightness to the suggestion, though Anakin isn't sure yet how it will work. He'll see what they can do - what Padmé and Qui-Gon can provide - that will achieve the end he wants. To see them gain what they need, and to buy himself free of Watto.

"If you have the parts to modify my pod so I can strip out enough, all I need then is a sponsor. Someone who isn't Watto. I'm not supposed to have a pod of my own, and I wrecked his again." A wreck had been why Watto had entered him in the Arena the first time. That he'd won against the odds, well, it had left Watto greedy for what that could win him. A nice extra bit of income for when the shop's profits were slimmer, and another pod was smashed in the back courtyard.

"Have you won a race before?" Padmé is watching him with a concerned frown, and Anakin almost reaches out to touch her hand.

"I'd have won the last one if Sebulba hadn't locked fins with my engines." He smiles, shrugging. "I've placed in three races, and I haven't wrecked unless someone cheats in the last three years. I can win this time, I know it."

He knows he has to win; this is his freedom, close enough to touch.

* * *

Obi-Wan watches the dust fill the air outside the ship, grimacing as he listens to it hiss against the hull. Qui-Gon and the others wouldn't be coming back in this, and he hopes his Master has found decent lodging in the settlement. And also that he contacts Obi-Wan when he has a quiet moment alone to do so, and won't alert anyone nearby that Queen Amidala is on Tatooine.

The storm turns the light a shade of yellow that makes Obi-Wan uneasy, though it fades as the suns set, and with it, the feeling of something entirely wrong. Whatever had niggled, it won't come in the dark.

It's late in the planetary night when Obi-Wan's com buzzes at him, and he takes it off his belt with a quiet sigh of relief. "Master."

"Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon sounds somewhat amused, and rather intent. Something has caught his attention on this dust ball. "When the storm clears, I will need you, the pilots, and as many of the others as can be spared to come into the settlement. The astromech will provide a list of parts we'll need to borrow from the ship, and bring with you."

"Master? I thought we were here to repair the ship, not cripple it further."

"It's only temporary, and the use of them may well earn us enough local credits to purchase the parts we were unable to obtain with Republic ones."

"You were able to locate the parts?" Obi-Wan latches onto that as the only sane part of this plan Qui-Gon seems to be concocting. "How are we going to earn the local credits with parts we need for the ship, when we would have to buy them back at no doubt exorbitant prices?"

Qui-Gon chuckles, and Obi-Wan wonders if he'll get in a terribly great amount of trouble if he strangles his Master with his own hair. "We are only loaning them to a local pilot, under the condition that we enter his illegal pod into a race as our own. The greed of the locals will provide the rest."

It's not the certainty of seeing it, but Obi-Wan knows how stubborn Qui-Gon can be once he has a plan in mind. He will change it as needed, but not because someone suggests that maybe he needs to have a little more of a plan than gambling on one person winning a race.

"I'll tell the queen, though I don't know if she'll let me take her ship apart further." Obi-Wan isn't certain if he hopes she will or she won't, as the latter will mean a change of plans that feels uncertain, and the former simply feels... strange. There's something in that future that he's not sure what to think of, even if he can't quite identify it, only that he wants to shy away from it.

When he brings the plan to Amidala with the list the droid had sent, she doesn't give him a chance to avoid whatever it is that he is not certain of, giving the orders to the others to strip what's been asked of them, and for most of them to prepare to travel into the settlement.

The next morning, the storm has abated, and most of the handmaidens meet Obi-Wan at the ramp of the ship. There are only two missing, and Captain Panaka is with the group to leave, for all that he has a sour expression on his face about it.

At least the parts from the ship that Qui-Gon asked for are light and readily carried, for the most part, and Obi-Wan is even more glad for it when they get close to the settlement itself. They'll attract too much attention as a large group, and he pauses far enough away they shouldn't be readily spotted in order to contact Qui-Gon.

"Where in this place are we meant to meet you, Master?" Obi-Wan keeps a wary eye on the collection of buildings that swarms with beings like a hive. He has a bad feeling about taking any of the Naboo in there, much less almost all of them.

"The slave quarter, around the north side. You should be able to circle around without too much trouble, if you stay far enough away."

Slave quarter. Obi-Wan closes his eyes a moment. Why is he surprised? "I sense you may have found another pathetic lifeform to adopt. Will we be taking them home with us?"

"Possibly." Qui-Gon sounds less certain of that, and Obi-Wan frowns. Usually when his Master has found someone to help, he's more sure of how he'll do that. Certain of what the Force wants from him. "We shall see."

Obi-Wan won't get anything more from him, he knows, and he simply acknowledges Qui-Gon before turning off the com and getting the group moving again. The primary star has almost reached its zenith before they are able to approach the settlement and the close-packed slave quarter that marks its northern edge. There's one group that stands out to Obi-Wan's senses, and he finds a racing pod there, with a young man half into one of the engines.

A young man with a swirling amber and black bird that Obi-Wan can't identify flaring around him, wreathed in flickering flames.

He draws in a sharp breath, moving forward almost on automatic, and it takes several steps to force himself to look away, and find Qui-Gon in the shade of one of the staggered buildings.

"Anakin." Qui-Gon's call draws the young man's attention, who slides out of the engine, glancing first at Qui-Gon, than over to the group that is seeking their own patches of shade.

That attention is shortly focused on Obi-Wan, or rather, slightly above his head. Seeing what Obi-Wan has worked hard to keep hidden from the rest of the galaxy, as befits a Jedi. He knows what the other will see. A sapphire blue and black hooved beast large enough to happily stomp in the head of most beings, with canine teeth as sharp as any predator's, and a spiraling horn as long as a lightsaber blade emerging from its forehead. Something enough to give a being nightmares, if anyone had seen it before he'd learned to hide.

"We brought the parts you asked for, Master." Obi-Wan sees a frown mar Anakin's face a moment before he smooths his expression. "What are we doing?"

"Fixing my pod-racer so I can fit into it again." Anakin waves Obi-Wan over, sliding a sideways look at Qui-Gon that's a mix of wary and curious. "I started building it when I was eight."

The pod itself does look a bit small to fit Anakin, even gangly as he is. At least with everything in it to cushion shocks and the controls. Obi-Wan glances at Anakin a moment, then back at the pod. If they strip it down to practically nothing, it could work. Maybe. With a good deal of luck and a very loose interpretation of what's a reasonable use of the Force.

"Do you think we can do it?" Anakin is watching Obi-Wan with hope gleaming in his eyes. Trusting Obi-Wan's opinion more than he apparently did Qui-Gon's, even though Obi-Wan assumes his Master had told Anakin it was possible.

"How long do we have to make the alterations?"

"Five days. And I'm not going to be here for most of the last day." Anakin moves back toward the engine he'd been working on when Obi-Wan arrived. "I'm in the Arena the day before the race."

Obi-Wan is certain he doesn't want to know what the Arena is, and equally as certain he can guess. It makes his blood run cold, and he wants to ask Qui-Gon what he's thinking, leaving things as they are. But what can they do for one slave, when there are so many that would face the same fate without any Jedi there to rescue them?

"I think we might. It'll be close, though." Obi-Wan knows now why Qui-Gon wanted the pilots to come, and the others. With them, they might be able to manage this.

* * *

From the platform they've arranged to watch the race from, Padmé can see past the walls of the race's starting and finish line to the wastes the race goes over and through, and if she goes to the other side, the walls of the Arena. She'd insisted, despite the brutality, on going to watch Anakin fight. They didn't need her help with the racing pod, and she wanted to see more of the young man and his brilliantly glowing soul.

He'd been surprised, and had tried to talk her out of it, though any of her entourage that were crowded into his small home could have told him that was a futile endeavor.

She draws in a deep breath, shaking away the thoughts of the day before, both pleasant and horrible. It had been enough to know Anakin was careful of himself and those he'd fought, that he'd made sure they left alive despite the spectacle that had the crowd around her roaring approval.

Walking back around to the side facing the race, Padmé leans forward, her hands resting on the edge of the platform as she watches the pods being pulled out to the starting line. Anakin's small pod is painted a brilliant blue, standing out among the rest. She's glad they'd been able to get the small pot of paint so the pod looked the part she'd claimed for it when she and Panaka had gone to enter it with Anakin as the pilot.

"He'll be fine." Obi-Wan leans against the railing next to her, his gaze as fixed on the pod as hers had been. "Did you have to paint it that shade of blue?"

"It matches." Padmé smiles to herself, glancing briefly at the blue shape that flows around Obi-Wan. Jedi weren't supposed to have souls like others, if the legends around them were to be believed. Obi-Wan had told her, when she asked, that they merely were very good at hiding them from everyone, and it was very rare indeed that anyone ever saw, outside of the Order.

Obi-Wan sighs, shaking his head, and doesn't say anything else. Waiting as the pod is pulled into place by Artoo, the Naboo pilots waiting to connect it while Anakin went over his controls one last time. There's something more to it that the Jedi have done, but neither of them would talk about it to anyone else - Padmé doesn't think they've talked about it aloud at all.

The flutter of flags draws the eyes, and the roar of the crowd is enough to tell Padmé that it's about to begin, even if she hadn't already asked Anakin everything she could about this race.

After that, there's very little to do, save watch the datapad which has a direct connection to the cameras along the race's route, and a program that tracks Anakin's pod in particular. Every sponser has one, to keep track of their pod and pilot until they finish or wipe out, though they all, like Padmé, hope it is the former rather than the latter.

Qui-Gon is over one shoulder, and Obi-Wan over the other, though when Padmé glances away from the pad to them, neither quite seems to be focusing on the footage, but something else. Something only Jedi can see, she supposes, something with the Force, and not knowing what is a frustration she puts aside after a moment. There are, after all, plenty of other things to worry about.

She cannot help wincing when the Tuskens are shooting at the racers, slug-throwers rather than blasters, though none even skip off Anakin's pod or engines. A small boon, that, when the pod itself is so fragile. More a boon is that when she notices other racers trying to shove Anakin into a wreck, or to sabotage his pod's engines on the fly, nothing seems to quite work.

The worst part is near the end, when he's fighting for the winning spot with Sebulba. A long-time rival who has wrecked Anakin before, and sent him home with nothing more than frustration and a new entry into the horrible fights, from the stories he'd told while they were stripping his pod to the barest minimum.

Padmé barely remembers to keep hold of the datapad when Anakin crosses the finish line, hurrying to send the platform back to the ground so she can get to him before the crowd gets too thick. It's easier, perhaps, because a number of them are her own pilots, and she has the two Jedi flanking her.

Anakin grins at her as he levers himself out of the tiny pod, and Padmé ignores all the protocol she should hold onto, darting forward to wrap him in a hard hug.

"Congratulations, Anakin! You did it!" She steps back a half-step, her face aching from smiling. They'd done it, and now she could begin to see a way forward.

"I will return shortly." Qui-Gon's voice is low, almost lost to the sounds of the crowd around them, but Padmé turns her head slightly at his words. "I have an unfinished piece of business to attend to, then we can take everything back to the ship. Obi-Wan will stay with you."

The unspoken knowledge that he knows she is more than a mere handmaiden remains so, and Padmé smiles again. "Thank you. We'll make sure the pod is ready."

Words that are easily put into action, the pilots decoupling the engines and Artoo taking the pod in tow once more. Eopies haul the engines, and when they are delivered, the parts for the hyperdrive. Padmé is glad to be back to the ship, even if she still plays the part of handmaiden rather than Amidala. She will have to, on Couruscant, but for now, Sabé is enjoying herself, and Padmé has other concerns.

Leaning against the doorframe, she watches Anakin and Obi-Wan as they put together the hyperdrive, already comfortable enough with each other to argue quietly about something in voices too low for her to quite catch. More interesting is what she sees when she turns her head, amber, blue and black whirling and dancing together, giving the appearance of a horned beast with wings. Something that she supposes should be out of a youngling's nightmare, though she finds it as beautiful as anything she's seen.

"You don't have to stand back there, Your Highness." Obi-Wan turns his head, a wry smile crossing his face a moment. "A third set of hands will not go unappreciated."

"I don't know much about hyperdrives." Padmé moves toward them, wondering idly what someone who could see all of them would see if they looked. Wings and hooves and teeth and scales, amber and black and red and gold. Something beautiful, she's certain. Something of what they might become, even, though she doesn't yet know what the future will bring.

"That's ok." Anakin smiles at her, making room for her to crouch between him and Obi-Wan. "We'll teach you."

Padmé laughs, and watches them both smile in response.

**Author's Note:**

> I will end it here on a high note, and worry about the rest later, since it didn't feel right adding the last bit of things on Tatooine to this. (The encounter with Maul, which is different in more ways than one.)
> 
> This is only the beginning of the AU, which I have some definite thoughts on for the rest of TPM and the years between there and the Clone Wars. And for the soul-manifestations of certain other characters - of particular importance being Qui-Gon (an ice-age antlered mega-fauna) and Maul (giant fanged serpant - no, not because snakes have been equated with evil).
> 
> And as for the trio - it would have been easy for Anakin's to be the dragon and Padmé's the phoenix, except that I really, really didn't want to go there.
> 
> Obi-Wan's is the unicorn, but not some pretty, dainty sort that's all silver and sweetness and virginal shit. No, this is a bloody-fanged warhorse with a horn long enough to pick someone up after impaling them. Thank you.
> 
> Padmé is the dragon, the protective and sometimes destructively so beast who hordes... well, in her case, hordes people. Her people are important above all else to her, no matter who those people are.
> 
> Anakin as the phoenix is not just because it was the one left, but because he remakes himself from the ashes of who he was before, and more than once. How much that works in this AU over canon, we shall see, but it felt right.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The First Steps](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13100007) by [Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




End file.
